


Punishment is misery as a deterrent to misbehaviour

by Mossgreen



Category: Slave Breakers - maculategiraffe
Genre: Angst and Humor, Canon Compliant, Cruel and unusual punishment, Fluff, M/M, Master/Slave, Math Kink, Mathematicians, Mathematics, Slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-11
Updated: 2018-07-11
Packaged: 2019-06-08 21:18:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15252258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mossgreen/pseuds/Mossgreen
Summary: Yves' first punishment as Holden's slave.I have been reading WAY too much of Mac's amazing Slave Breakers fics recently and falling in love with Yves all over again. This is my very first fic in the amazingly complex SB 'verse.





	Punishment is misery as a deterrent to misbehaviour

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Maculategiraffe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maculategiraffe/gifts).
  * Inspired by [In which Holden asks a question, and things hit the fan](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/397059) by Maculategiraffe. 



> I've been re-reading pretty much all the Slave Breakers stories over on maculategiraffe's LJ and fallen in love with that world and setting all over again. I never commented at the time to anything, mostly from nerves and all, but I do really love all the characters (well, apart from Dunaev and Robin, but everyone else!) and everything and got attacked by a plotbunny. This isn't going to be too long a story, I don't think; I don't really write long stories. Set between [this](https://maculategiraffe.livejournal.com/26805.html) and [this](https://maculategiraffe.livejournal.com/27004.html). _Punishment is misery as a deterrent to misbehaviour_ is something Alix says at the very end of [Part Ten and a bit of Jesse](https://maculategiraffe.livejournal.com/17056.html); I always thought it sounded as though she was quoting, perhaps an in-universe manual or something.
> 
> (Dialogue in italics, and the title, are direct quotes)

_"Okay," said Holden, pulling back again to look into Yves' face. "I think it's best if there's a standard punishment for lying, and if the_ only _time you get punished in that particular way is if you lie. That way you get in the habit quicker, of associating lying with the punishment, instead of with getting away with stuff. See what I mean?"_

_"Yes, master," said Yves, who saw perfectly and approved, but rather wished Holden would elaborate on the details of what he had planned before Yves' imagination got him shaking again._

_"So I'd like you to choose," said Holden._

_"Choose?" Yves echoed, baffled._

_"The punishment for lying. If you pick getting paddled, for example, I'll never paddle you except for lying. Or, I don't know, it doesn't have to be a physical punishment. It could be-- losing your library privileges for a certain amount of time, for example. I'd pick something you'll really hate if I were you, because you'll get the message quicker, and once you do, you can be sure it will never happen again. But it's your call."_

_Yves stared at his master. Holden leaned forward and kissed him gently on the cheek._

_"No rush," he said. "You don't have to decide right now. Be thinking about it, and let me know what you come up with. I reserve the right of veto, by the way. No sex for a week might be a nicely dire punishment for you, but I have no intention of punishing myself too."_

Choose your own punishment... it sounded like a more sadistic version of the 'choose your own adventure' books Yves vaguely remembered from his childhood (well, he hadn't had them, but a friend had had one and they'd had fun with trying to get the happy ending without the main character ending up immured in the castle or falling into a pit of sharpened stakes).

Yves' master wasn't capable of sadistic thoughts.... no, that wasn't true either. He was perfectly capable of _having_ them, even capable of carrying those ideas out, but he wasn't... cruel with it. Not like the elder Lord Chernov had been, not like other slave-owners could be, at least according to some of the darker rumours Yves had heard.

He was surprised, on one level, that Holden hadn't hauled him off to the training room and told him to select an implement from the scarily impressive collection it held. But that would have been too easy, too simple... not enough of a deterrent. And that wouldn't fit the master as he was coming to know him. He'd kept getting caned at Lady Katya's only partly because she thought things punishable that Holden simply didn't – if the cane had been an effective implement to encourage good behaviour, Yves would have probably been a better slave in Lady Katya's eyes. 

Anyway, Holden had started to redeem the cane and transform it into... something else, something that could be pleasurable in his master's hands. And those two points together added up to ruling the cane out.

He sat down at his desk, still half disbelieving that his master had provided him with a desk, not to mention a bookcase for the books Holden bought him. He opened his current book and reached for a pad of paper and froze as though Holden had just walked back in.

“ _Or, I don't know, it doesn't have to be a physical punishment_.” The mental version of Holden sounded entirely too amused in a way that Yves' actual master hadn't when he had actually spoken the words.

Yves put his head down to the desk and groaned in despair. “Oh... Loki venom-eyed,” he muttered, abandoning his normal blasphemy for the more visceral one Holden preferred. His master was entirely too good at psychology and psycho-analysis and of course Yves was the perfect subject for it – and Holden's past as a slave meant that he was scarily good at using Yves' own imagination against himself.

Yves wasn't sure whether to call down curses or blessings on his master's head. His own imagination _could_ work to his advantage (see the whole 'redeem the cane to be an implement of pleasure in my master's hands' thing), but in situations like this one, it was a distinct disadvantage. Which was probably the whole point.

He reluctantly closed the book, and cleared the shelf of the half-dozen or so tomes that Holden had bought (for him!) in the not-quite two months since he'd bought Yves himself, stacking them on his desk.

_Punishment is misery as a deterrent to misbehaviour_ , he thought, the quote sounding vaguely familiar, although he could not have said where he had heard or read it. Possibly from one of the books on training slaves, or owning slaves, that he had glanced through at Lady Katya's. It did sound like that sort of thing, a dictionary definition found in that kind of training manual.

He gathered his books together before he could talk himself out of it – a whipping would be over quicker and be simultaneously less and more painful, but it would be obvious that he had not taken his master's advice. And it was advice, really, not an order... _I'd pick something you'll really hate if I were you, because you'll get the message quicker, and once you do, you can be sure it will never happen again_. It was good advice, too, Yves could admit that much, even if he did not particularly like the implications.

Be punished for the nine times the lie would be detected and the tenth time, when it wouldn't be detected, simply wouldn't occur. Not that he ever planned on lying to Holden ever again anyway, but he hadn't exactly meant to do it this first time either, only he'd been backed into a corner and reacted instinctively, and he hadn't even finished the sentence before he was on his knees, knowing he had just said precisely the wrong thing. 

Holden was at the desk in the lounge when Yves found him. Yves swallowed but couldn't back out now, and not merely because he needed his master's permission to leave the room once he'd entered it. 

“What's this, sweetheart?” Holden asked, laying his pen down.

Yves swallowed, setting the pile of books down on the desk before going to his knees beside his master. It was a more suitable position to be discussing what was, after all, an uncomfortable subject. 

“My punishment, master,” he said, looking up into Holden's face, finding the reassurance there that he needed, and half-dreading that Holden would laugh at the very suggestion. There was something comical about a punishment consisting of being deprived of mathematical textbooks, but Yves was in no mood to find any humour in it at all.

“Very suitable, and not at all a typical punishment,” Holden said. There was laughter lurking at the corners of his mouth but his eyes were serious. “How long were you thinking I should have them?”

Yves' mouth had gone dry; he had not thought of that part of it at all. “A... a week, master?” he said, the end of the sentence rising in pitch and making it sound more like a question than he was happy with.

“You're being harder on yourself than I planned,” Holden informed him, running his hand comfortingly through Yves' hair. “Shall we see after three days?”

* * *

The following afternoon seemed specifically set up to prove how incredibly frustrating and boring things could be if Yves did not have his books. He had gone to sit at his desk three times to work on something, only to find that the book he had been referring to was not there. There was nothing in the library, where he could have sworn there had been at least one textbook on the shelf; Holden had guessed he'd try there and removed that temptation too. Unsurprising, of course, but incredibly frustrating. 

Greta was concentrating on her crochet, a pretty, delicate thing in a calmer green than that of her tunic, and Yves had to forcibly swallow a growl at the fact that she could practise her hobby, and his had been confiscated. It was his own fault, of course, but that did not lessen the frustration or the accompanying envy.

Having something be denied to you was the surest route to having your sole focus fixed on obtaining that one thing, Yves thought, realising that he had just read the same sentence three times in the novel he had picked up, and he still didn't know what it said. 

“Yves? Come here.” Holden's voice was gentle but insistent, and Yves dropped the novel onto a side-table and approached his master, who was sitting on the sofa, leaning back on one arm and his legs outstretched along it. 

Yves obediently sat in front of the sofa, leaning back against it to let Holden run his fingers through his hair and closed his eyes.

“Right – ah, you've put a bookmark in. That makes it easy,” said Holden from over his shoulder. “OK... Given that _y_ equals open brackets 4 _x_ minus one close brackets to the power of twelve, find d _y_ over d _x_.”

Yves' eyes snapped open and he groaned. “I thought you said you loved me, master. I'm sure you're not supposed to torture people you love. There's got to be a rule about it somewhere.”

“Not that one?” Holden's voice was full of humour. “Lean back, sweetheart, and I'll see if I can find a better question for you...”


End file.
